


It’s Only You

by Bincal



Series: When Three Words Aren’t Enough [2]
Category: iKON (Korea Band)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff, Ik I’m just as surprise as u r, M/M, dont rly have much to tag tbh coz I hate spoiling, whAt I am writing something actually HAPPY?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:21:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21577483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bincal/pseuds/Bincal
Summary: Bobby always comes back.But what if he chooses not to leave at all?
Relationships: Kim Hanbin | B.I/Kim Jiwon | Bobby
Series: When Three Words Aren’t Enough [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1521152
Comments: 18
Kudos: 72





	It’s Only You

**Author's Note:**

> This is the Part 2 of another fic in the same series. If you can, read that one first as it will set you up correctly for this one. However you can probably read this one alone too. 
> 
> So. This happened. Finally. I’ve kept ya waiting, huh?
> 
> Something new I’ve never done before, if you’d like some song recommendations for reading here’s a few I listened to whilst writing this:  
> Youth - Kim Feel, Chang Wan Kim  
> Sorry - Halsey  
> So Cold - Ben Cocks  
> Nostalgia - Woo, Woogey  
> Hurts like Hell - Fleurie  
> Happier - Ed Sheeran (ik it gives u flashbacks from the fmv but it does kinda fit)
> 
> Idk I have more but I doubt ppl will even care l o l 
> 
> Anyways enjoy :P

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

It’s a predetermined response; one that took too much practice to perfect but now comes without even a spared thought. 

“You’re obviously lying. I’m your _fiancé,_ you think I don’t know at least that much?” The statement is said lightheartedly, however; and with a fond smile occupying its owner. But she would not be smiling so freely if she knew just how wrong she is, just how much she _doesn’t know._

Yet Bobby is nothing if not selfish, because he doesn’t want to lose this. Not _her_ , necessarily; but instead the bliss of ignorance, the bliss of what she entails. 

Or, more specially: the bliss that she is a _she._

* * *

  
At the age of 7, Bobby told his mum that he wanted to marry the boy that played football with him every Friday in the park next to his house.

“He’s so _cool!_ I wanna marry him so we can play football together forever!” 

At the time he didn’t notice the tenseness in his mother’s eyes, nor the forceness of her smile. “That’s really sweet, Jiwon. Of course you can play football with him forever. But you can’t _marry him,_ you silly!” 

“Why not?” 

“Because boys don’t get married. They can’t, it’s against the word of the Lord.” 

Bobby never spoke about his football hyung again.

At the age of 12, Bobby got his first proper male crush. It was a friend of his from class, they walked home together and often played video games after school.

On one of those days, Bobby tried to hold his hand on the way home. The boy flinched back, saying _that’s gay_. They still played video games after that. 

That evening, Bobby brought up the topic again to his mum for the first time in years.

“Why is it wrong to be gay?” 

His mother smiled sadly, “It's not what God created us to be. It’s _unnatural_.”

At the age of 15, Bobby had his first wet dream about another man. 

He woke up sweating, soaked, and _ashamed._

That day, he went to church despite the fact that it was a Tuesday; praying over an hour for forgiveness. 

He didn’t manage to stop feeling tainted until a few weeks later. He never stopped feeling guilty. 

And the dreams continued.

At the age of 19, Bobby fell in love with another man. 

The man’s name was Kim Hanbin. 

And he hated himself for it.

* * *

  
“I have a work report to write.” 

Bobby looks towards the source of the voice, no more than a lump in the duvet and a scruff of brown hair. He looks so frail, so _small;_ a boy who’d been hurt too much rather than a mature man in his early twenties. Bobby’s own heart lurched painstakingly at the sight. 

_It’s your fault he’s like this. You know that, right?_

Bobby clears his throat, unable to clear his mind, and sits down on the bed behind Hanbin’s curled up form. “Do you want me to leave?” His voice is small, uncertain, as this is what it’s really about. Hanbin could never say no to him, and Bobby is the biggest scum on the earth for secretly loving it, taking advantage of it just because he doesn’t _want_ to leave. 

He wants to stay: lie down behind the boy and take him into his arms, kiss his neck, clench a hand in the front of his white T-shirt, breathe in his scent and tell him he’ll never leave again. He wants to hold his hand in public, introduce him to his parents as his boyfriend, propose to him and start a family together. 

He wants to do it all. 

Not with the woman waiting at a modern apartment 100 miles South for his return, an 18 carat white gold band with an obnoxious diamond elegantly adorning her wedding finger, who eagerly greets him with extravagant meals every evening he comes home from work and kisses his cheek welcome. 

No, he wants to do it all with the duveted bundle burritoed just inches away from him. The man who gurgles and chokes unflatteringly when he laughs too hard; who throws childish fits when things don’t go his way; clings to people like a baby in an adult body when he’s scared; or cries dumbly behind shaking hands at sad scenes in Disney Movies. The man who has never known the definition of relaxing, who taught Bobby everything he knew about having a dream and persevering to achieve it, who helped him find belonging in a country that felt foreign to him, who stood by him through every single one of his lowest moments. A man whom Bobby trusts with his life. A man whom Bobby is in love with, however much he wishes he wasn’t. 

Maybe it’s better if he does leave, after all. 

Just as he’s considering to do so, a barely visible shake of a head has whatever pathetic resolve he had built crumbling. Any thought of leaving files out the window. 

In the same way Hanbin can never say no to Bobby; he himself can never really say no to Hanbin. 

He’s sure that if Hanbin asked him to drop his whole life and run away with him to Spain, he wouldn’t think twice before agreeing. 

It’s both a blessing and a curse that Hanbin was too much of a coward to ask anything of the sort. 

Bobby lies down, then. Close, but not too close. Not wrapping his arms around the narrow shoulders, but placing a trembling hand on the hip beneath them. Not kissing his neck, but resting his own messy hair on the soft skin instead. 

He feels a sigh escape the other, as though he had been gearing himself up for rejection. The thought bombards Bobby with its hurtfulness, leaving him almost completely robbed of the ability to breathe with how unexpectedly heartbreaking the idea even is. His hand tightens on the hip against his will, and he has to make a conscious effort to take a deep breath and relax his sudden unnerve. 

A silence encompasses them both. It’s not comfortable, hasn’t been with Hanbin for a while, something heavy lingers in its stasis. Bobby doesn’t mention that Hanbin is supposed to be writing his report, nor that he himself is supposed to be on his way back home since an hour ago. They breathe in each other's presence: memorising the subtle contact of skin; the scent of sweat and sex that stains the air from the night before; the sound of familiar breathing that they had memorised like the back of their own hand, could recognise it in all it’s high intonations or breathlessness in any given situation. 

“Do you love her?”

The question doesn’t surprise Bobby as much as it should, given the fact this is its first appearance. He had been waiting for this. Readying himself, though feeling fully ready had never come. Probably never would.

He could’ve played dumb then, reply with a frustrating _love who?_ , kept up the side-stepping and false pretences. “She’s my fiancé.” He says instead, opting for truth however unrevealing it is. 

“Do you love her more than you love me?” For this, he isn’t prepared. Hanbin had directly mentioned his feelings on several occasions, but in all of them he was too out of it in one way or another for Bobby to require a proper answer. Be it drunk like he had been during his first confession, or so overstimulated during sex that he didn’t fully comprehend how much he was revealing. Bobby could avoid the topic then, never for it to be brought up again in a clear-minded scenario. 

Until now. 

“I love you the most, bro. You know that.” Bobby knows it’s the wrong thing to say, can see it in the way Hanbin’s body physically flinches as if the word had burnt him. Bobby doesn’t want to lie, he _can’t_. But he also can’t say the full truth, hiding his feelings before a ‘bro’ as if that would make them dissipate into non-existence. 

He can see Hanbin visibly shrinking in on himself, moving to stand up and _away._ Bobby reaches a hand out to frantically pull him back but he recoils, as though Bobby’s touch alone was enough to hurt him. Maybe it was.

“I mean it!” Bobby panics, unable to bear the heart wrenching look on the younger boy’s face. He doesn’t want Hanbin to leave. He wants Hanbin to _stay._ He wants to pull him back into his embrace, to whisper nothing but loving reassurances into his ear. 

_I love you. I love you._

Just three words. Why can’t he get it right?

“Hanbin-“ The boy turns around then, and any pathetic defences Bobby was about to say die in his throat. Hanbin smiles, but the expression is anything but happy. He’s watched Hanbin crying, breaking down, panicking, angry. He’s seen Hanbin at his _worst,_ even when he himself was the cause. 

But nothing has ever hurt him as much as the look on Hanbin’s face in this moment. He looks broken _, empty._ All colour has faded from his eyes in an instant, leaving only a dull mist too heavy to float in his gaze. Bobby sees his lips move, probably spelling out something ridiculous like “I’m fine.”, but Bobby can’t _hear._ All he can think about is the fact that he’s watching his best friend - more than that, the person he’s in _love with -_ fall apart in front of him and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. 

He reaches out again, faster this time, catching Hanbin’s wrist in a tight grip before he slips away completely. He pulls him back to the bed, not even fully thinking straight about what he’s doing. His own lips move, but he doesn’t realise what he’s saying until he says it again, then again. Suddenly unable to keep up his usual guard. 

“ _I love you. I love you.”_ Hanbin’s eyes widen momentarily at Bobby’s impromptu chanting, but he quickly starts shaking his head. The smile is back; the sad one, the one that speaks of a hundred heartbreaks. Or maybe just one, but so grand that he has wept enough tears to rival a hundred.

It seems that they always resort to this, these three words. Has their meaning died somewhere along the way? Have they used them untruthfully so much that now they’re nothing more than empty promises, loyal only in their reappearance? 

“I’m okay. Don’t comfort me. You don’t have to take pity on me.” Bobby shakes his head, Hanbin’s voice sounds so empty, _resigned._

_Why do I always hurt him like this?_

“I’m not, I mean it Bin. I do. I just, I _can’t-“_

“I think you should go.” When he sees Bobby about to argue he continues, “You don’t have to stay with me, I’m fine.” 

Bobby leaves with his head hung low, lingering at the door in hopes that Hanbin will change his mind. He’s not strong enough to fight, no matter how much he wants to stay. He can’t possibly refute Hanbin when his expression is so crushed, broken heart materialised in his eyes. More so because Bobby knows he’s the cause of his suffering, yet is too cowardly to fix it.

Can this even be fixed? 

Bobby finally turns away, plagued by the sight that he knows will haunt him for far too long after he walks out the door.”

* * *

He doesn’t go home, in the end. He sits alone on a bench in an empty park, staring at the untouched can of beer set next to him. 

_I would have stayed._

_Why didn’t you ask me to stay?_

Bobby doesn’t recognise how late it is when his phone starts vibrating in his pocket, and oddly enough he doesn’t have to read the name to know who it would be. He was expecting this; in a masochistic, suffocating kind of way. 

It didn’t stop his throat from closing and heart from stalling when the first word rang out statically through the device after picking up.

 _“Kimbap?”_ Hanbin’s voice is small, the word gasped out more than spoken. Bobby knows instantly that Hanbin is already drunk, that nothing he says from now will be pleasant to listen to.

He doesn’t hang up.

“I-“ A pause. A deep breath, shaky in its passage. “Why did you _leave?_ Why do you _always_ _leave?”_

Bobby tries to swallow, but something desperate is squeezing his throat with dagger-like fingers. 

It’s always like this.

Bobby always leaves. Hanbin always calls. Bobby always listens. 

Nothing more, nothing less. 

Today should have been no different; the exchange no less painful than usual, but also no more likely to loosen the screws pinning boards of terror before his heart. 

But something’s different. Maybe it’s the text he had received an hour prior asking what time he’d arrive home, or maybe it’s the vivid memory of the look on Hanbin’s face as he had turned his back on him. Whatever it is, it makes his mouth move against his will.

“Why didn’t you ask? Why did you… you should have just said…” 

“And hear you say no?” There’s something about the way Hanbin says this, an affected clarity, that makes Bobby realise with a jolt the other isn’t as intoxicated as he’d believed. Maybe he never had been, but it was easier to believe otherwise.

“You don’t know that.” Bobby feels his voice cracking, and he has to force a sharp breath out of his nose to gather himself. “You _never_ know _._ You always _assume.”_

“Then would you have? If I asked?”

 _“Yes.”_ There wasn’t a second of hesitation his response. Hanbin goes quiet. Bobby counts the inhales and exhales on the other line, so breathy they’re barely there at all. 

“Why are you still here? June said he’s being harassed about why you haven’t gotten home yet.”

“I didn’t want to… go back.”

“Jiwon...” Hanbin’s voice is so tired, and it shifts something wedged deep in Bobby’s bones. 

“I love you.” And saying it should feel liberating, but it only makes him feel more desperate: chest squeezing and voice breaking from the overwhelming emotion he can’t withhold. “I _love_ you, so why isn’t that enough? Why- why…” 

They’re left in silence: Bobby gasping in an effort not to cry, just barely choking down a breakdown. He hears Hanbin taking trembling breaths and knows he’s crying: could picture the wistful drops cascading like fallen angels to their miserable end; the hollow smile that would strain his lips without his knowledge as a coping mechanism. It’s a sight he had seen before, too many times.

There’s something so bittersweet about that knowledge.

“Stay.” The younger boy finally says, after a pause so long that Bobby thought he was going to hang up. “Don’t leave. I’m asking you now.” 

And suddenly Bobby can _breathe,_ inhaling as though up till this moment he’d somehow forgotten how to. He nods frantically then pauses, belatedly realising that Hanbin can’t see him. 

“Okay.” His breath condenses into a dreary cloud, Bobby realises for the first time that it is pitch black out and he’s shivering. He laughes a little dumbly, though the sound echoes too stiffly in his ears to be anything cheerful. “I’ll come back to yours. Wait for me?” 

“Of course.”

They hang up. Bobby stands up for the first time in hours, throws away the can he had never opened, and leaves the park. 

* * *

When he arrives at Hanbin’s house for the second time that day, he feels as though he’s come back home after an awfully long and stressful day at a job he doesn’t enjoy. 

Hanbin looks smaller than usual when he opens the door, then stands to the side to let Bobby in. They don’t say anything, not even a greeting. Something barely palpable permeates the air; a tremble in the otherwise calm waves of space that can’t be seen but can be _felt,_ raising their hairs on end in the distress of its making. 

They’re waiting. For what, they aren’t fully sure. Something jolting enough to tip the walls they had subconsciously built in the distance between them; making them feel miles further apart then they actually are. 

Bobby smiles, and it’s like the pressure suddenly eases. The walls don’t quite tip, but a crack has started spreading in fine cobwebs across its surface. Hanbin smiles back, still unsure but genuine, and Bobby crosses the space between them. 

“I guess we should probably talk?” He takes the boy’s hand, who’s smile only widens into a less hesitant one. They resettle themselves onto Hanbin’s bed; facing each other with crossed legs and frightened hands finding comfort in their union across their laps. 

“I’m sorry.” Bobby blurts out, shocking himself only by the knowledge that he should have done this sooner. Hanbin deserves this, more than this in fact. He deserves everything Bobby can’t give him. 

“I know. Me too.” Their hands play with each other in reassurance, but they’re unable to lift their heads from their bowed posture. 

“You have nothing to be sorry for.” 

“I’m making you choose between us.” The guiltily uttered words are only partly true, and Bobby wants to explain this fact. There’s no competition in between the two people, there never has been. It’s only Hanbin, always. But he still has to make a choice: between his heart, and his head. 

Or maybe it isn’t his head at all. Maybe it’s really the looming terror of being constantly watched, judged, condemned to an afterlife of torture by eyes that glare from a higher realm than the one his own feet tread on. Or even the gut-wrenching memories of disappointment shimmering in eyes akin to his own; of fuller lips that frown in discomfort at the mere suggestion of two men together in any scenario remotely romantic. 

“I’m afraid.” He says instead, feeling that no human words could rightfully describe the complexities of inner turmoil tugging at his conscience. Yet Hanbin’s eyes soften in a kind of misunderstanding, and Bobby knows that those two words are enough. 

“Me too.” He says in response, a lopsided smile wobbling his lips. “Wow, listen to us. We sound like socially awkward teenagers and totally not working adults who are supposed to have their shit together by now.” 

Bobby’s own lips spread into an amused smile. “That’s a lie, and you know it. We’re at the age where we’ve just started understanding what taxes are and how difficult it is to actually pay them. Did I tell you June’s thinking of moving back with his parents cause he thinks rent’s too expensive?” 

Hanbin scoffs, “Course he is. The guy spends all his money on food and then complains that he has none. How do you even know that anyway? You two don’t even talk.” 

Bobby tenses slightly, “My fia- I mean, um, someone else told me.” Hanbin visibly withdraws at the implication, his face dropping from its previously fond smile into something more strained. “They really are friends. That’s cool. For you.” He looks up at the older with narrowed eyes, clearly uncomfortable with the shift in conversation. “Or, does it bother you?” 

“No, why should it?” Bobby replies without hesitance, squeezing the hands that were still being cradled in his own. The _‘I have you’_ goes unsaid, but Hanbin understands his meaning if the pale blush that blooms on his cheeks is anything to go by. 

But this fact only makes him feel more frustrated. At what point had Hanbin settled for nothing more than subtle hints and reading between the lines? Is this really the most he thinks he deserves? 

So Bobby tries again, determined to stop hiding behind layered remarks and settle for something more honest. “I meant it. What I said.” The boy looks at him in question but waits, lets Bobby find the courage to finish. “I love you. I don’t want to leave, not ever again.” 

Hanbin’s face becomes unreadable: blank, but not from lack of emotion. It’s almost as though he’s filled with so many conflicting feelings that his own expression becomes too overwhelmed; driven to a state of incomprehension. “You’re getting married.” It’s a statement, but the tremble in its intonations is questioning enough that Bobby feels compelled to answer anyway.

“I- I think I’m gonna break up with her. No, I know it. I’ve been thinking about it for a while.” Doubt fills Hanbin’s gaze, so he rushes to elaborate. “I don’t love her. Probably never have, just wanted to. Even if you and me weren’t- I mean, I think I’d have done this eventually regardless. We don’t suit each other.” 

“You would have left again if I didn’t call you.” 

“Maybe.” Bobby confirms, feeling unable to lie when trapped under the intensity of that gaze. Hanbin does pull his hands back this time, and Bobby can see the wall thickening, the cracks being plastered over. He reaches out, grabbing Hanbin’s wrist not unalike he had earlier that day, but this time he’s determined not to let go, not to be pushed away another time. Not ever again. “But I wouldn’t have wanted to. I would have been unhappy, like I’ve been every time. I’d have busied myself with work, avoided everything and everyone, then found some random excuse just to come back and see u again. I don’t- I don’t _want_ to _do_ that anymore. I don’t wanna lie to myself, or to you.” 

Something in Hanbin’s eyes calms down at his outburst, but the hesitance still hangs thick as smog. 

“I love you.” He sees more than hears the younger inhale at his statement, the deep rise of his chest and subtle flare of his nostrils. But Bobby doesn’t see him exhale and knows, just like that, that he’s holding his breath, waiting. “Please, let me love you.” 

Hanbin finally exhales, the mountains of dread and uncertainty following the breath out. The hands return to their place of belonging in Bobby’s own, and a smile peeks across slightly flushed cheeks. 

How could Bobby ever have hurt that innocent smile? 

So he leans forward, cracked lips trying to convey endless apologies - long overdue in their delivery- to fuller, softer ones. 

“Sleep with me.” Hanbin says when he pulls back, then hurriedly elaborating when he realises how suggestive it sounds. “Not in that way, just, stay with me. Please.” 

Bobby feels his heart swell, barely remembering to nod before he settles down beside Hanbin on the bed. The other boy contemplates something for a moment before following his movement, lying down with his front facing Bobby. 

They’re awkward in a way they’ve never been with each other before. It could be the fact that Hanbin’s cheeks still have dried tear stains speckling their complexion, or the fact that Bobby still has a single one of his hands cradled firmly in his own. 

Either way, looking into those piercing onyx eyes has Bobby feeling like he’s 19 again: 5 minutes late to his first lesson of the year and being forced to take the only empty seat left next to a hoodie-clad figure with bed-hair worse than his own. But when the boy turns to look at Bobby’s intruding form, he takes his breath away. _How can someone be so manly but so beautiful at the same time?_ He remembers how cold his hand was when he shook it in greeting, and how soft his hair looked in the auburn light illuminating the natural curls from behind. He couldn’t have predicted just how often he’d find himself wanting to stroke those gentle curls, or warm that cold hand with his own. 

He reaches out in the present with his free hand, his fingers barely tracing the now tougher locks framing Hanbin’s face. “You’re beautiful. I’m sorry, I don’t say that enough.” He could feel the minuscule quicken of rhythm in the heartbeat that echoes to his own palm, only noticeable from how tight his grasp on Hanbin had become. 

Something in Hanbin’s gaze sharpens. Not out of anger or annoyance; it’s something Bobby could only name as fear, shining through proudly in its destructiveness. 

“I’m sorry, I mean it. I can’t say it enough. I have so much to apologise for…” 

“It’s fine, stop saying sorry.” Hanbin cuts him off. His momentarily downcast eyes lift, but look away again too quickly to reveal anything else. “Let me just enjoy this.” 

Bobby doesn’t realise it then - and he will berate himself for this for a long time in the future - but Hanbin is resigned, in a way. He has already geared himself up for heartbreak at the end of the night, for that familiar disappointment in the morning when he feels the faintness of warmth on the empty spot beside him. 

They reposition themselves at some point to something more entangled: Bobby’s arms wrapped almost suffocatingly around Hanbin’s torso, their legs messier than uncoordinated wires. Despite the fact that it has now reached the early single digit hours of the next day, they can’t fall asleep. Bobby: because Hanbin can’t; and Hanbin... 

The answer to that is less clear. 

“Sleep.” He eventually gruffs out to the tense shoulder he had rested his face upon. Hanbin jolts slightly at the voice, as though he had been unaware of the other’s state of consciousness. Then, because he knows Hanbin too well, “We’ll talk about it all properly tomorrow, stop thinking.” 

Hanbin huffs and starts shifting as though trying to move away but the older only tightens his hold, so he eventually settles into stillness again. When the stiffness in the student’s posture does not relax a few moments later, Bobby sighs exasperatedly. 

“Fine. Talk to me. What’s bothering you?”

“Nothing.” And Bobby would facepalm himself, if it didn’t mean having to unwrap himself from the ever-cool body in his arms. So instead he lightly pinches the stomach in his grasp through the fabric over it, encouraging a stunned gasp out the other.

“Don’t. We need to start talking to each other. We’ve been side-stepping the issues for too long.” 

Hanbin goes quiet, and Bobby is just about to start thinking he won’t say anything at all when he finally whispers something. Bobby barely catches it, even in the silence of the room, having to strain his ears just to hear it. “I don’t want to wake up to see you gone again.” 

He feels his heart break apart painfully at the confession. 

_Of course_ the boy is still insecure, Bobby had left too much, let him down too many times. It will take more than just one day of honesty to undo all the hurt he’s put the other through. 

He unwraps his arms and gently turns the younger to face him so that he can cradle his face in his own two palms. 

“Hanbinnie… I won’t leave again. Please, believe me. I know it’s not easy, and it may take a really long time until you fully trust me… I hurt you so much, baby. So, so much…” 

“No you didn’t. I wanted it, I-“ 

“I _used_ you.” There are tears choking both of their voices again. “You deserved _better._ You _deserve_ better. I can’t promise I can give you everything you deserve but- I don’t want- I _can’t just”_

“I love you. I want _you._ That’s all I want.” 

Bobby nods frantically, thumbing at the corner of Hanbin’s eye where a tear had started its fateful journey. “You have me. _You have me._ ” 

“Don’t leave.”

“I won’t. I promise.” 

“Don’t go back to _her._ Don’t-“ 

“I won’t. Well, I’ll have to, to break up with her and get all my stuff. But then I’m coming right back.” Hanbin sighs with what appears to be mellow contentment. 

It’s okay, for now. They’ll still have to talk about everything properly, offer far more apologies. He’ll never stop feeling sorry, he thinks. 

And Hanbin may wake that morning frantically searching for him; hoping, always hoping, that he’ll reach a warm hand that doesn’t belong to him, a crude mop of maroon hair, or even the brush of a jointed shoulder. He may continue to wake up in a frenzy every morning after that, always searching. Freaking out more so on those few days Bobby isn’t there, gone to do something he should have done long ago, and talking himself into the belief that he has been abandoned again. 

It will take Bobby coming back late in the evening to find him curled up in a nonsensical ball too frail to even dent the surface of their latitude. Bobby will reach out, grasp, hold; stroke along a shaking back and whisper nothing but steady promises into heaving breaths. 

And Bobby may still run away again, fear overwhelming him with taunts of failure and regret. Like when he has to break up with his fiancé, and it takes him two visits back because of that little voice that tells him he’s leaving behind more than an unwanted part of his life; but an idealistic one. Or when he has to tell his mother about the change in perspective: explain the fact that it has been the case for all his life; and watch all her hopeful aspirations crack and fracture like shards across her face. And the shards will hurt, stabbing into previously unreachable depths of his self-esteem. 

But then he’ll come home to Hanbin’s anticipated awaiting, watch his face crumble only to quickly harden in determination. He’ll sit at the dinner table as Hanbin fleets around the kitchen, bundled up in one of Bobby’s hoodies and trying his best at some kind of ‘cheer-up meal’ recipe he had hurriedly found online. And just like that, Bobby will smile; and remember just who it was he was coming back to.   
  


But for now, he sticks to three words, spoken into the lips of only man he ever wants to receive them.

“I love you.” 

Things won’t be fully resolved for a while. They still have cuts and bruises that are taking far longer to heal, that may never heal completely. They need to talk; honestly, properly, for the first time in years. They need to sort out real-life issues, make cancellations, reorganise their responsibilities. 

Just three words will never be enough, they know that. 

But for now, just for now, maybe they are. 

**Author's Note:**

> Now that that’s over .. y’all can yell at me that I made u sad anymore !! (I hope, it’s still kinda sad)
> 
> IMPORTANT MESSAGE: I used strict Christianity as a plot device for Bobby’s conflict here, but I do NOT have ANYTHING against Christianity and I just wanna make that clear. I’m actually a strong Christian myself and have been raised in a hugely Christian household, and the struggles hinted at with religion and homosexuality are very inspired by my own in this exact topic , as religion when taken too far can be very damaging or isolating. But when you are ignoring the minority that does this, it is also BEAUTIFUL and inspiring. So please don’t get the wrong impression from this.
> 
> Also, Bobby’s mum in this may appear evil or as an antagonist but do not misunderstand: some people were raised to believe certain views, it is not easy to break out of this and may not necessarily be their fault. That doesn’t make them bad people.
> 
> Anyways, that was a bit of a rant(? Outburst? Explanation?) . But that’s it !! I’m so glad it’s finally finished , it took much longer than I expected bc I rly wanted to get it right and for a long time I couldn’t get across the emotions that I wanted . I’m happy with the outcome tho :P
> 
> Please please PLEASE leave comments (and maybe kudos too uwu) coz I wanna know what y’all thinkkkkk it gives me such inspiration to write y’all don’t even know , just one positive comment can be enough to stop me from giving up writing altogether . 
> 
> Also , follow my twitter!! @aj_binc


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